A Skeptical Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of WILHELM REICH

As related to

Vacuum Orgone (VACOR) Tubes

By Roger M. Wilcox

Last modified 15-June-2018

Vacuum Orgone ("VACOR") tubes were highly evacuated glass tubes with electrodes
on the ends. When a high enough voltage was applied to the electrodes,
the space inside of the tube would glow. Reich claimed that such
high-vacuum tubes, when placed in an orgone
accumulator for a period of time, would glow at a lower threshold voltage
than identical tubes that had not been placed in an accumulator.

Reich described his VACOR tubes and experiments in a lengthy article titled
"The Oranur Experiment, First Report," first published in his journal Orgone
Energy Bulletin, volume V, numbers 1-2. Copies of this journal are
surprisingly hard to find; at this time they are only available in bound
photocopy format from the Wilhelm Reich Museum at
http://www.wilhelmreichtrust.org/orgone_energy_bulletin.html.
Fortunately, though, Reich considered this article important enough that he
re-published it as a separately available work a couple years later. This
separate publication retained both the title of the original article (The
Oranur Experiment: First Report (1947-1951)) and the page numberings used
by the article as it originally appeared in the journal. Currently, this
reprint is available from the same Wilhelm Reich Museum in bound photocopy
format. (A portion of this article was also reprinted in the much more
easily accessible Selected Writings, but the VACOR tube descriptions
were not among the parts so reprinted.)

The VACOR tube began its life as a variant of the gas-filled tubes used in a
Geiger-Müller counter. Reich believed that the GM-counter was
actually recording orgone energy phenomena
and not ionizing radiation, and set out in the Oranur article to "prove" this.

I describe the operation of a Geiger-Müller counter circuit in some
detail in my critique of Reich's G-M counter
technique. A standard Geiger-Müller circuit places several
hundred volts between the two terminals of the tube. The voltage
has to be below the breakdown voltage for the gas in the tube under normal
conditions, and above the breakdown voltage for the same gas with just a tiny
amount of incident ionizing radation.

Reich seemed to be aware of how a GM counter worked to a limited extent:

"From nuclear physics, through its publications, as well as through several
electronic physicists with whom I discussed this problem, I learned that
nuclear physics was quite certain that in the Geiger action the outer
radioactivity merely acts like a trigger on the 'gas ions' within the
counter tube; accordingly, the energy which activates the GM recording
system has its source in the electricity which comes from the line to the
electronic tubes (filament and plate voltage).

[It should be noted here that GM tubes do not have "filaments." They only
have a plate and an anode electrode. They are not the kind of "tubes" one
would have encountered in a vacuum tube radio or TV of the time.]

With each 'ionization event' in the counter tubes, the resistance
between the anode and the cathode is lowered in such a manner that an instant
electromagnetic energy flow is activated. The radium ray, as such,
has, to this view, nothing whatsoever to do with the impulses recorded at the
output end of the device."
— The Oranur Experiment: First Report
(1947-1951), pp. 243-244 [emphasis in original]

However, as Reich was convinced that the radiation which triggered the GM counter
was orgone radiation and not ionizing
"nuclear" radiation, he somehow came up with the convoluted hypothesis that it was
the orgone radiation itself, and not the sudden conduction of the
high-voltage plates across the tube, that provided the "energy" recorded by the GM
counter. To test this hypothesis, he hooked up an electroscope to the anode
wire of the GM tube, as shown in figure 4, page 244 of the Oranur article:

Fig. 4

(Note that in Reich's time, a divided-by (÷) sign was used to indicate
what nowadays is called the minus (–) terminal.)

Reich had associated electroscope deflection with orgone energy phenomena since he
first observed it in 1939. Thus it was with great glee that he observed the
electroscope in the above circuit deflecting whenever the GM counter registered
incident radiation:

"The result of this experiment challenged the theory that the impulses which
activate the GM tube are only triggers for 'ionization events' in the counter
tube. The electroscope leaf would jump high with each impulse developed
in the counter tube. The leaf was constantly kept away from the metal
rod of the electroscope if the succession of impulses was fast enough, i.e.,
in the neighborhood of ca. 2000 impulses per minute. The energy at the
electroscope in each single impulse amounted to about the equivalent of a
range of 100-200 electrostatic volts (!!), i.e., the amount of electromagnetic
voltage necessary to achieve the same degree of deflection of the leaf.
The equivalent in volts with rapid succession of impulses was in some
electroscopes much higher — with 3000-4000 CPM in the vicinity of 500
e.s. volts. These were incredible, tremendous reactions.
They in no way fitted the minimal amounts of energy as expressed in the theory
of electron microvolts. The great amount of energy in itself
contradicted the theory that ionization was responsible for the action of the
counter tube plus amplifying grid system."
— The Oranur Experiment: First Report
(1947-1951), pp. 244-245 [emphasis in original]

The "theory of electron microvolts" that Reich mentioned probably refers to the
fact that a single high-energy charged particle (e.g. the kinds of particles
responsible for most nuclear radioactivity) only has an energy of a few
electron-Volts. But let me make one thing clear before I continue.
An electron-Volt is indeed a unit of energy (and a very very small unit of energy
at that) — but a Volt is not. A Volt is a unit of electric
potential or electromotive force. The plates of a capacitor, or
of a GM tube that is turned on but not registering any impulses, can have a
potential difference of several hundred Volts, and yet no energy is expended
until the capacitor or GM tube actually discharges — after which, the
potential difference will have dropped to zero. Likewise, an electroscope
does not measure "energy," it measures electric charge or the Voltage
(potential difference) level.

And more importantly, remember that what Reich called the "GM Ampl." in the
diagram above is more than just an "amplifier" — it provides the high
near-breakdown Voltage for the Counter Tube, via a battery or other external
electric power source. This means that when the tube does conduct,
it forms a circuit of several hundred volts. The electroscope is
deflecting because several hundred volts are flowing through the circuit to
which it is attached whenever an impulse count goes off. Thus, the
500 electrostatic Volt reading Reich saw on the electroscope when the
counts-per-minute got close to continuous conduction is totally expected
by conventional theory.

In fact, if Reich had replaced the GM tube in Figure 4 with a conducting wire,
the electroscope would have deflected even more.

Characteristically, though, Reich lept to the unjustified conclusion that the
radiation itself, and not the hundreds of volts placed across the tube by the GM
amplifier, was responsible for the electroscope's deflection, and that since this
"fact" went contrary to what conventional nuclear theory predicted (since the
amount of energy in a single radioactive charged particle is so small), it
therefore "proved" that the radiation was caused by something other than nuclear
radiation. Which of course, to Reich, meant orgone energy was involved.

Reich decided to go further and try to see if orgone energy could be demonstrated
in a tube that wasn't filled with gas. So, starting with the basic GM
tube design, he added an extra plate and evacuated the tube to the greatest extent
possible. This new design he called a Vacuum Orgone (VACOR) tube. A
diagram of a VACOR tube appeared on page 248 of the Oranur article as Figure
7. It looked like this:

Two photos of this tube appear on pages 198c and 198d of the article.
Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce these photos here. A picture of one of
Reich's VACOR tubes also appears in Cosmic Superimposition, chapter VI (p.
241, 2000 ed.) as "Figure 37," but the only descriptive text accompanying Figure 37
is the caption "Orgone energy luminating in an 0.5 micron pressure vacuum tube."

"Reich began experimenting with vacuum tubes in the late 1940's in an attempt
to understand unusual pulsation phenomenon which he had witnessed in
geiger-mueller tubes stored in orgone accumulators. He began
experimenting with evacuated tubes resembling vacuum discharge tubes often
used for visualizing glow discharges at various pressures (Yarwood, J.,
High Vacuum Technique, John wiley&Sons, 1961, P73-75). One of
these tubes is shown on P.185 of his article, which included a grid
wire. This simple tube design was evacuated by Reich to a permanent
vacuum of 0.5 micron, which is 3.8x10-4 Torr, usually with an argon
filling. Reich found that after prolonged exposure inside of an orgone
accumulator, these tubes could be made to luminate at much lower D.C.
threshold levels than what would be expected from the level of rarification
[sic] of gas inside."

Now, 3.8 x 10-4 Torr is a very low pressure. D. Marett
isn't kidding when he calls this a "high vacuum." This is one-half of one
one millionth of the normal air pressure at sea level, which is why it's
referred to as "0.5 micron." This is much lower than the pressure inside
a conventional "vacuum" tube. Getting the inside of a glass tube down to
such a low pressure is a Herculean task. And if there is even the tiniest
imperfection in the seals around the electrodes of such a tube, a little bit of
outside air could slowly leak in.

If you apply a high enough voltage across argon, or any gas, it will glow.
This is the principle by which a neon sign or a fluorescent tube operates.
The voltage at which the gas's electrical resistance breaks down, and the gas
starts to glow, is called the "breakdown voltage." The thing is, you need
a certain minimum density of gas molecules for the glow to happen at the
"normal" breakdown voltage. Extremely rarefied gases require a higher
voltage before they will break down and conduct electricity. Gases that
aren't quite so rarefied have a lower breakdown voltage. D. Marett even
admits this in the third paragraph of his article, and in his Calibration notes
to his Experiment 1.

Given Reich's history of sloppy experimental controls, I can imagine what might
have happened in the course of conducting his original VACOR experiments:

Reich got the Electrotechnic company to make him some electrode-equipped
tubes evacuated to 0.5 micron (3.8 x 10-4 Torr).

Reich measured the voltage at which each tube could be made to glow, and
found this voltage to be quite high (more than 20 000 Volts).

Reich placed these tubes in an orgone accumulator and left them there
for a couple of weeks, during which time some of the surrounding air
slowly leaked into the tubes because their seals weren't perfect.

After the weeks had passed, Reich measured the breakdown voltage of each
tube again and, surprise surprise, discovered that it was lower than what he
had originally measured.

Since both an orgone accumulator and a glowing phenomenon was involved,
Reich leapt to the conclusion that he was seeing the effects of orgone energy
in a vacuum.

Reich also saw occasional glows when he stroked the tube with his
hand. This was "obviously" due to his personal orgone energy field and
could not possibly be due to, say, a static electric discharge. He
did not stroke any of the tubes that had not been subjected to an orgone
accumulator to try and elicit a glow reaction from them.

At least one person involved with orgonomy, Bernhard Harrer of the Wilhelm
Reich Society in Germany, has tried and failed to duplicate Reich's results
with his VACOR tube experiments. He presented his negative findings
at the Reich Society's annual meeting in 1993 or 1994. Harrer also came
to the conclusion that Reich's tubes had leaked air inside of themselves.
James DeMeo of the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab wrote up a rebuttal to
Harrer's results, which can be viewed at
http://www.orgonelab.org/harreren.htm about 3/4 of the way down the
page. His main objection seems to be that Harrer didn't exactly
duplicate the exceedingly precise conditions under which Reich did his VACOR
experiments. This is a strange objection, because when DeMeo himself
later claimed to have successfully duplicated Reich's VACOR experiments
(in his 1999 fundraising letter, archived at
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815093102/http://www.orgonelab.org/j_fundng.htm),
he made no mention of these precise conditions being present.